Blurred
by ChocolatStar
Summary: The 'last hope to save the world' is dead. After six long years of grueling battles with the Fire Nation  Aang has finally been brought down. Katara doesn't cope with the lost too well...


Hey all )

This randomly came to me whist listening to Kelly Clarkson. I don't know why…'shrugs.' It's a bit different.

The premise? After six long years of fighting against the Fire Nation, Aang is finally brought down. Katara doesn't cope very well.

Katara's 20, Aang _was_ 18 (as is Toph) and Sokka's 22.

I'd just like to say now that I believe the way I've wrote Katara here is completely out of character for how she is on the show at the present time (lol - so yes, basically I'm bad-mouthing my own work here ;) ) I think that if (Avatar writers forbid) Aang ever _did _die, that it would only act to fuel Katara's determination to defeat the Fire Nation even more so. Of course she'd be hurting - scarred even - but I don't think she'd ever give up like I've written she has here. _But _I also know that bereavement effects different people in different ways - so yeah, maybe being older (as she is here) and after having seen so much pain in her young life, perhaps Katara could snap - and unable to deal with everything anymore she could fall victim to drink.

Sorry that was really long. Just wanted you all to understand my view-point.

Anyway - story anyone?

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Avatar: The Last Airbender. 'Goes to cry in the corner' ;)

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The sound of live instruments pumped throughout the wooden walls of the tavern. Katara's body had been taken hostage. The music possessed it to shake, as her head swam in its delicious beat.

The brunette loved music. She could get lost in it.

It made her forget.

While locked in its intoxicating rhythm, Katara could only concentrate on moving.

This would mark the tenth night in a row the brunette had been out. …Ever since…

It seemed she was stuck in an endless state of drunken deliria. Katara would go out, top up her alcohol levels and then stumble back to her temporary lodgings.

It was good. It made her forget.

With the constant night activity, Katara's body barely had enough time to recover from the last drinking binge before it was forced to consume another - so the young Waterbender was never completely all there.

That was good too. After all, how could Katara feel the cold pain of reality when she was barely aware of her surroundings?

On rare occasions when the brunette could actually think straight, she was regretful for the effect her actions were having on her waterbending training. It really had just gone to pot.

But Katara could always pick that up again at a later date.

…Maybe at a time when facing her emotions wasn't so hard - or at least that's what she kept telling herself. Perhaps the reality was that the Water Tribe girl could never go back. - But at that particular moment, Katara was all too happy just to wallow in her world of semi-conscious ecstasy and not worry about that little thing called 'reality.'

The beat changed then - slowing - and the brunette slowed with it. Katara's hips made circular, seductive movements, as her arms rose up, before falling to trail themselves down the fine contours of her lightly swaying body.

Katara knew that in her low-cut top, tight wrap-a-round skirt and knee-length boots, she looked hot. The Waterbender had brought the barely-concealing outfit after Aang had…gone away. It was something that Katara would never have even considered wearing before then. …But that had been back when she was happy - back when the brunette didn't need a dirty grope against a tavern wall to forget the troubles of life.

The men were all leering at her petite form from behind their pint glasses. She could see it - the lust in their clouded eyes.

It was something that might have intimidated Katara in the past (either that or thrown her into a mad, sexist-driven, waterbending frenzy) - but those days were long gone. The old Katara was dead.

But ah what was this? There was a man approaching her now - shaking and curving to the music just as she was.

He was cute, Katara supposed. But then how much did that even matter anymore?

The brunette always argued with Sokka about her behaviour. She knew it crushed his heart every time she turned up drunk and falling about the place after a night out.

Katara didn't mean or want to hurt him - or Toph. In fact, the Waterbender hated herself for putting the people she was supposed to love through all her crap just because she wasn't strong enough to face the problems head-on - but Katara just couldn't stop! The allure of the music and haze was too great. There - she didn't need to think about the Fire Nation, or Aang, or anything. She only needed to dance and drink and accept the warm company of someone else lost in the beat.

Which was exactly what the brunette was hoping would happen that night.

The man was moving closer. Katara shot him a flirtatious glance, and grinded her body in a manner that she knew would send him wild with desire.

Sokka said that she'd changed. He said that she was destroying herself. …Katara knew it too. The brunette didn't like the person she had become - but what did he expect of her?! She had just lost her best friend to the war!

All Katara wanted was to forget…was that so wrong?

The Waterbender's admirer had finally made it to her. Smelling of cheap beer and perfume, he boldly wrapped his arms around Katara's waist, and danced behind the brunette - matching her own movement.

Men were so easy. Show them anything in a skirt and they'd charge at it blindly, relying on their never-regions to lead the way. Though that's not to say men didn't have their uses from time to time…

The first night Katara had decided to go out, she had felt somewhat ill-at-ease with all the male attention directed at her. But now the brunette knew exactly where her 'talents' lay, and how best to use them to devastating effect.

Sometimes Katara scared herself. …It was such a stretch from the optimistic, innocent girl she used to be.

The Waterbender felt her newfound dance partner grind into her, before pressing his mouth against the line of her neck. He kissed and pecked at the skin there.

It was good. It made her forget.

The room was spinning - just as every room seemed to do those days. Katara felt like she was living in a sea of blur.

No.

Not living.

Merely existing.

The brunette twisted her body to face the man. He had nice eyes she noticed. Too bad about the obvious drunken obscurity mixed within them, …but then, perhaps her own eyes looked much the same.

"You've been teasing me all night long," he husked - his breath hot against Katara's ear.

"Have I?" she asked, "or have you just been getting _yourself_ all worked up watching me?"

He laughed and pressed his lips onto hers.

It was good. It made her forget.

Sometimes, when Katara had waited long enough between drinks to allow her head to actually clear, the brunette wondered how she had gotten into this whole mess.

It had just been one drink at first…something to ease the pain. But it had worked too well - and now she was addicted.

If the woman was outside looking into her life, Katara was sure she would ask why, with Sokka and Toph still around to live for, had she allowed this to happen?

The Waterbender felt awful. She knew that Toph and her brother were probably at the house wondering if perhaps that night would be the one where the brunette didn't come home. And yet still - she just couldn't help herself.

It was as if Katara was slowly sinking - and she knew that the person she used to be was just waiting on the surface - happy and smiling and encouraging her to take a breath of real life - but the effort to reach that past self was simply too great.

So she just continued to drown instead.

When Aang died, it had killed a part of Katara as well. That's why she allowed the man's hands to wander wherever they pleased. Facing reality was too hard an option.

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Stumbling back that morning, Katara knew nothing but the bright lights of torches and blurry shapes.

She laughed and it seemed to echo.

The brunette took another staggering step forward, but managed to tangle her legs and crumbled to the floor in a drunken heap. The fall should have probably hurt - but Katara felt nothing.

She never felt anything anymore.

Face twisted to the side and her cheek pressed against the damp solidness of the ground, the brunette giggled blissfully to herself.

It was good.

It made her forget.

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And that's that. Thanks for reading and I'd be mightily interested to see what you all thought.


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